Nuda Veritas
by zero
Summary: The lies that hurt the most are the ones we tell ourselves, and the truths that cause us pain are the ones we most need to face. Spike/Buffy


TITLE: "Nuda Veritas"  
AUTHOR: zero  
E-MAIL: zero@jamesmarsters.com  
DISTRIBUTION: Available on my site at www.zeroimpact.com Elsewhere  
please ask.  
SUMMARY: The lies that hurt the most are the ones we tell ourselves, and  
the truths that cause us pain are the ones we most need to face.  
RATING: PG, I guess. There's nothing too racy in here.  
CLASSIFICATION: Buffy/Spike  
DISCLAIMER: Spike, Buffy, and all the other characters mentioned in here  
belong to Joss. I'm just borrowing and abusing them.  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Chelle and Slade for their betas, even when I  
ignored their good advice. This is set somewhere in an ambiguous season  
five, but it's not very specific to any episode.  
  
NUDA VERITAS  
by zero (zero@jamesmarsters.com)  
  
Sometimes, in the thin, cool hours between night and day, Buffy would  
pile pillows behind her back, prop herself against the headboard, and  
fix her eyes on the bedroom door. It never opened when she watched it;  
it never swung in on its hinges to admit some unsuspecting loved one who  
would frown and gasp and discover her dirty secret.  
  
Sometimes, she wished it would. Sometimes, she imagined that it did.  
Sometimes she wondered what words she would offer when the intruder  
would ask, in a surprised and agonized whisper, the only sane question  
that could be asked. The only question that anyone would ask, standing  
in her doorway and observing the scene, breathing in the sharply scented  
air.  
  
Why?  
  
She might have said that his lips tasted like honey, that his hair was  
like finely woven silk and his skin the smoothest alabaster. She might  
have said that his touch trailed like slow-moving, slow-burning lava  
when he caressed her skin, or that the words he whispered into her ear  
as they clutched at one another were the most beautiful poetry ever  
breathed. She might have said that he was a gentle and considerate  
lover, the only one who could truly understand her, the only one who  
could stir passion in her numbed heart anymore.  
  
She might have said that she loved him, but it would've been a lie.  
  
When she was being honest with herself, she could admit that his kisses  
tasted of blood, beer, and cigarettes. That his hair was coarse from  
abuse, usually sticky with gel, and sometimes smelled of chemicals. That  
his skin held the same imperfections as any man's, and that his touch  
wasn't so warm, not anything akin to fire, more like the cool  
mid-morning air. That the sounds he breathed into her ear were sometimes  
words but more often the snarls and growls of an animal, and that his  
touch was usually rough with urgency and hunger.  
  
But those admissions were painful, so the honesty she granted herself  
was rare, and grudging. And in the safer, warmer confines of her  
imagination, when the door opened and someone -- Giles, her mother,  
Willow, Xander, sometimes even Tara or Anya -- stepped into the room,  
the lies she would craft for them would be intricate and beautiful. She  
would list his virtues and his strengths, and the unwitting invader in  
her imagination would slowly begin to understand that the bond she  
shared with her lover was true, and unbreakable, and that they loved one  
another with a strength and purity like something from a fairy tale.  
  
Even in her mind, the lies tasted overpoweringly sweet, like the purest  
confection, so filled with sugar that her teeth ached with it. And no  
matter how carefully she crafted her arguments, no matter how quickly  
she could win over the visitor in her imagination, she could never quite  
fool herself.  
  
Occasionally her mind would conjure up other phantoms who would not be  
swayed by her arguments, either. Angel would stand solid in her mind's  
eye, cloaked in black cloth and shadow, gazing at her balefully from the  
doorway. Or Riley would stand there, every line of his body stiff with  
tension, his eyes burning with unspoken accusation.  
  
She always banished them swiftly, and tried not to think of them again,  
But they'd still slip inside, somehow, still stand and stare and not say  
a word. She had stopped formulating speeches for them in her mind,  
because they never listened anyway.  
  
Buffy sighed, long and slow, when the dim light of morning began to push  
at the edges of the heavily curtained windows. She turned her eyes away  
from the door, glancing at the window, absently noting the arrival of  
another day like any other day; another day filled with sunshine that  
couldn't reach far enough inside her to touch the shadows hidden there.  
  
Her lover stirred, his body shifting next to hers between the rumpled  
sheets, his arm brushing against her shoulder in a comfortable, casual  
touch. His eyes blinked slowly open, his tongue flickered out to wet his  
lips, and a soft, nearly imperceptible smile softened the hard lines of  
his face as his hand reached out to slide across her stomach.  
  
"Morning again," he murmured, his lips grazing her collarbone. His tone  
made the words half question and half statement, and his voice radiated  
reluctance.  
  
"Yeah," she agreed, hand automatically rising to touch him. Her fingers  
skimmed lightly over the fine dusting of down at the back of his neck  
before firmly cupping that flesh, drawing him to her for a quick, chaste  
kiss. "You should go before the sun comes up."  
  
He drew away from her with the slow, lazy movements of a deep sleeper  
not yet entirely awake, and tugged on his clothes with an uncaring  
clumsiness. He seemed unfazed when his feet were caught up in a pile of  
her laundry, and didn't seem to mind if he looked foolish when the  
process of pulling on his jeans disturbed his balance, forcing him to  
stumble forward a step. His gaze skittered over the floor as he looked  
for his discarded t-shirt, and one hand absently slipped through his  
hair, forming new rifts and peaks in the already-mussed blond tangle  
atop his head.  
  
Buffy watched him silently, filing away the unconscious gestures and  
little movements in her mind for later examination, because these  
morning times, on the sharp edge of dawn, were the only times she was  
able to really see him. At night, when they tumbled into bed, darkness  
smoothed his body and cast shadows on his faults, leaving in his place  
the silver-highlighted silhouette of her perfect lover. In the day, with  
the sun burning high overhead, it was as if he were white-washed by that  
blinding light, and the worst of him was exposed to her eyes.  
  
But in the early morning, with the world cast in pooling mixtures of the  
blues of night and the yellows of day, in that purgatory between them  
both, she could find a middle ground between the lies she spun for  
friends who weren't there, and the harsh truths she forced upon herself.  
The sparkling Adonis took on the listed and exaggerated imperfections,  
and met somewhere in between, the blur of both lies becoming the sharply  
focused image of a man. Just a man, like any other, distinguished to her  
only by her need for him and her inexplicable affection. The vampire who  
knelt by her bed, digging underneath with one arm in search of his  
boots, was not the mythic lover that women sometimes wish for, nor a  
monster to be slain.  
  
His mouth tasted stale in the mornings, and sometimes the light touch of  
his hand was the only thing that made sense in the world.  
  
"I'll see you at the store tonight," he said.  
  
She could only murmur unintelligibly in response, dragging her eyes away  
from the familiar curve of his shoulder, which she'd mapped a few times  
before with her tongue. She met his eyes -- the skin wrinkled at the  
corners when he smiled, and she wondered idly how old he had been when  
time had stopped for him -- and he repeated himself, recognizing her  
lack of comprehension in the slightly opened slit of her mouth.  
  
"I'll see you at Giles' store... we're meeting for patrol, remember?"  
  
She nodded, watching silently as he shrugged on his coat and slipped  
somewhat awkwardly out the window, avoiding the hallway where he might  
run into someone beyond the barrier of the closed door. She faintly  
heard a muffled curse as he dropped to the ground with less than feline  
grace, and her eyes turned back to the bedroom door as she listed to the  
rapid retreat of his feet on the pavement, and finally the hollow metal  
sounds of a shifting sewer grate.  
  
The sun seeped in with a little more power, casting a few glowing strips  
of pale, pale yellow against the white door. She imagined again that it  
swung open, but it was Spike standing on the other side in this new,  
hazy daydream. He smiled the same lazy, satisfied smile that he often  
wore just before daybreak, and leaned against the door frame, watching  
her without saying a word.  
  
Buffy smiled, rearranged her pillows and sank back into their embrace  
for a few more moments of sleep, surrounded by the smoke and peroxide  
smell of him.  
  
She might've told that apparition in her mind that she didn't love him,  
but it would've been a lie. His mouth tasted stale in the mornings, and  
sometimes the light touch of his hand was the only thing that made sense  
in the world.  
  
The End  
  
----  
Am I on crack? Write me some feedback and let me know!  
zero@jamesmarsters.com  
  
  



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